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UN Daily News - 15 April 2016
UN Daily News - 15 April 2016
www.un.org/news
UN Daily News
Friday, 15 April 2016
Issue DH/7138
In the headlines:
Yemen at critical crossroads, Security Council told
The talks will commence on 18 April and aim to reach a comprehensive agreement, to end the conflict and allow the
resumption of inclusive political dialogue in accordance with UN Security Council resolution 2216 (2015) and other
relevant resolutions.
Meanwhile, in the last round of peace talks which took place in Switzerland, a committee was established the Deescalation and Coordination Committee (DCC) to prevent further violations and avoid any military escalation.
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The agreement on the cessation of hostilities also created local levels of support. The Government of Yemen and Ansar
Allah have nominated local committees in militarily contested areas to work with the DCC and ensure better compliance
with the cessation of hostilities, the envoy indicated, adding that unfortunately, most of the local committees are not yet
fully functional but should be in the coming days.
Despite a discernible decrease in the level of military violence in most parts of the country during the first days of the
cessation of hostilities, Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed told the Security Council there have also been a worrying number of
serious violations particularly in al-Jawf, Amran, Mareb and Taiz.
Fighting in Taiz continues to cause civilian casualties and I am concerned that a spiral of escalation could threaten the
success of the peace process, he warned. However, the recent events over the last weeks at the same time have given me
hope. I would like to acknowledge the courage displayed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Ansarallah by accepting to
settle border disputes.
He said both parties confirmed that these agreements pave the way for the general cessation of hostilities in Yemen. The
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has supported both the government of Yemen and the Houthis to sign a landmark agreement
aimed at supporting the cessation of hostilities and the work of the De-Escalation, Coordination Committee and Local DeEscalation Committees and supports the role of the United Nations.
Calling on all parties to support the important work which humanitarian agencies are carrying out, Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed
underlined that humanitarians will continue doing their best to deliver assistance to those in need and negotiate sustained
access to hard-to-reach areas.
Briefing on these efforts, the Assistant Secretary-General of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA), Kyung-wha Kang, informed the Council that more than 6,400 people have now been killed, and over 30,500
injured. She said displacement has spiked, with some 2.8 million people now forced from their homes.
Livelihoods have been ravaged, Ms. Kang warned. Some 14.1 million people now need help accessing adequate
healthcare as a result of a year of intensified conflict. Lack of supplies, medicines, electricity, fuel for generators, and staff
or equipment, have caused health services to decline across the country. Entire governorates have been engulfed in relentless
violence.
This includes locations such as Taiz where intensified fighting in and around Taiz city since mid-March has left scores of
people dead and wounded, and also significantly hampered relief work.
This paints a very bleak picture, but there is some cause for very cautious optimism, she continued. The cessation of
hostilities is bringing calm to many areas of the country, reducing the crippling violence that has devastated these
communities.
Humanitarian organizations have also begun to respond in areas that were previously difficult to access, but despite these
efforts, Ms. Kang told the Council that vital operations continue to be hampered by a variety of bureaucratic impediments,
principally by the authorities on the ground.
Concluding her remarks, she said OCHA maintains the hope that the parties to this conflict will choose the only path to a
solution negotiation and dialogue no matter how challenging that path may seem.
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Below is a list of candidates in the order they appeared before the Assembly:
Igor Luksic, current Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of
Montenegro.
Irina Bokova, current Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESC), nominated by Bulgaria.
Antonio Guterres, most recently the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, nominated by Portugal.
Danilo Trk, former President of Slovenia.
Vesna Pusi, Minister of Foreign and European Affairs and First Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia.
Natalia Gherman, former first Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration
of the Republic of Moldova.
Vuk Jeremic, President of the 67th session of the UN General Assembly and a former Foreign Minister of Serbia.
Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and the current Administrator of the UN Development
Programme.
Srgjan Kerim, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and was the
President of the 62nd session of the UN General Assembly.
According to Mr. Lykketoft, almost every country was represented in the audience to ask questions during the dialogue.
My impression is of course my experience is short but during the months Ive been here, we never had that frank and
substantial discussion about the future of the United Nations as the one we got during these informal dialogues, he said at
the media stakeout.
Weve talked about the virtues, weve talked about the flaws of the UN, and the candidates have presented a lot of
interesting views on how to do things ever better, he added.
Mr. Lykketoft also told reporters that these past three days are just a part of the process of transparency and that he hopes
they will help generate wider discussions about the selection of the UN chief.
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With more candidates possibly joining the current nine, more informal briefing could be held in the coming week and
months. Mr. Lykketoft noted that he was inspired by the interest the public has shown in this selection process, with more
than 227,000 people from 209 different countries and territories having visited his website.
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The UN stands firmly behind the victims that showed courage in coming forward and continue to work to ensure that they
receive the assistance and justice they deserve, he said.
With MINUSCA's mandate set to expire on 30 April, the Secretary-General has recommended a technical roll-over of its
mandate to allow the Secretariat to fully consult the new Central African authorities before making recommendations to the
Security Council for the missions new operating procedures, he noted.
Business as usual is clearly getting us nowhere, said Michel Sidib, Executive Director of UNAIDS. The world must
learn the lessons of the past 15 years, following the example of countries that have reversed their HIV epidemics among
people who inject drugs by adopting harm reduction approaches that prioritize peoples health and human rights.
Those countries included China, Iran, Kenya, Moldova and Portugal.
Recommendations
The report also presents the evidence base for five policy recommendations and 10 operational recommendations that
countries should apply to turn around their HIV epidemics among people who inject drugs. These include the
implementation of harm reduction programmes to scale and the decriminalization of the consumption and possession of
drugs for personal use.
Data demonstrate that countries implementing health- and rights-based approaches have reduced new HIV infections among
people who inject drugs.
In other countries, strategies based on criminalization and aggressive law enforcement have created barriers to harm
reduction while having little or no impact on the number of people who use drugs.
Imprisoning people for the consumption and possession of drugs for personal use also increases their vulnerability to HIV
and other infectious diseases, such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and tuberculosis, while incarcerated.
Health is human right
Health is a human right, said Mr Sidib. Investment in people-centred policies and programmes for people who use drugs
is the crucial foundation for a global drugs policy that not only saves lives but is also cost-effective.
UN News Centre www.un.org/news
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The UNAIDS Fast-Track approach has a set of targets for 2020 that include reducing new HIV infections to fewer than
500,000. It also calls on countries to ensure that 90 per cent of the more than 12 million people who inject drugs worldwide
have access to combination HIV prevention services, including needlesyringe programmes, opioid substitution therapy,
condoms and access to counselling, care, testing and treatment services for tuberculosis and bloodborne viruses such as HIV
and hepatitis B and C.
Achieving these targets will be a significant step towards ending the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030.
The UN General Assemblys speical session on the world drug problem will run at Headquarters from 19 to 21 April.
Each study has been categorized in the areas of virus, vectors and
reservoirs; epidemiology; disease pathogenesis and consequences of
Zika infection; clinical management; public health interventions;
health systems and services response; research and product
development; and causality.
Users can also search the database by publication type: published articles, protocol and publication of preliminary results.
The agencies said the search mechanism was created after a group of experts from around the world met in March to discuss
a regional agenda to prioritize and coordinate research on Zika. At that meeting, researchers concluded that efforts must be
increased to explore unknown factors about microcephaly and other congenital malformations that may be linked to
infection by the Zika virus.
Experts analyzed and mapped the gaps in scientific knowledge about the virus, how it affects people, its implications for
public health in the Americas, and the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the vector that transmits the disease, the agencies said.
To date, Zika virus is circulating in 34 countries and territories in the Americas. It is transmitted by the bite of an Aedes
mosquito, and now has been found to be sexually transmitted. Zika has been associated with congenital malformations such
as microcephaly, and neurological complications such as Guillain-Barr syndrome.
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Globally, millions of children under the age of five are at risk of never reaching their full developmental potential. One out
of four children under five (159 million) are stunted due to poor nutrition, with numbers significantly higher in parts of
Africa and South Asia. Nearly half of all three- to six-year-olds don't have access to pre-primary education. In Sub-Saharan
Africa, 80 per cent are not enrolled in pre-primary programmes.
The time has come to treat childhood stunting as a development and an economic emergency, said World Bank Group
President Jim Yong Kim, noting that countries cannot compete in a more digitalized global economy in the future if a third
or more of their children are stunted.
Our failure to make the right investments in early childhood development is condemning millions of children to lives of
exclusion, he said, adding: We can't promise to equalize development outcomes, but we can insist on equalizing
opportunity.
Stress can inhibit brain development
Emerging scientific evidence also shows that prolonged exposure to adversity, such as that experienced by children growing
up in countries affected by conflict or households affected by domestic violence, can cause toxic stress, a condition that can
also inhibit peak brain development in early childhood.
What we are learning about all the elements that affect the development of children's brains, whether their bodies are well
nourished, whether their minds are stimulated, whether they are protected from violence, is already changing the way we
think about early childhood development, said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. Now it must change the way
we act.
A 20-year study in Jamaica showed that disadvantaged young children who were exposed to high-quality early stimulation
interventions as infants and toddlers earned up to 25 per cent higher wages as adults, equivalent to adults who grew up in
wealthier households.
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Early childhood development is also an investment in economic growth. Evidence suggests that an additional dollar invested
in quality early childhood development programmes yields a return of between $6 and $17.
Early childhood development included in global development goals
Recognizing the growing understanding of ECD's importance, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted last
year by UN Member States, include an early childhood development target, the first time it has been explicitly included in
global development goals. The target is to increase the percentage of children under five years of age who are
developmentally on track in health, learning and psychosocial well-being.
Although early childhood development falls under Goal 4 of the SDGs, it provides a natural link to other goals, including
poverty reduction, health and nutrition, women and girls' equality, and ending violence.
Under conducive conditions, up to 80 per cent or more of a farmer's yield can be lost due to rust infections, so building
countries' capacity to detect them and better understand the ways the various strains of the disease spread is crucial to
preventing epidemics and limiting losses, said Fazil Dusunceli, a Plant Protection Officer at FAO, in a press release.
A highly mobile plant killer
Wheat rust comes in three types yellow, stem and leaf rusts with yellow and stem rusts spreading widely in recent years.
The rusts have the capacity to turn a healthy looking crop that is only weeks away from harvest into a tangle of yellow
leaves or black stems and shrivelled grains at harvest.
The plant plague is highly mobile, spreading rapidly over large distances by wind, and can wreak havoc on crops if not
tackled properly when first detected.
The most well-known strain is Ug99, a highly potent form of stem rust first detected in Uganda in 1999 and which has since
spread to 13 countries, some as far as Yemen and Iran. It has the potential to affect the majority of wheat varieties grown
worldwide. Most recently it has been detected in Egypt, one of the Middle East's most important wheat producers, the UN
agency said.
Also cause for concern is a new strain of yellow rust, called Warrior, which has made its way from northern Europe to
Turkey, affecting various countries along the way.
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IDP camps were established in the late 1990s close to the Trepca mining and smelting complex, known to be the cause of
lead contamination and other forms of toxic contamination of the surrounding areas since the 1970s. The camps, which were
intended to provide only temporary accommodation up to 90 days, were in place for several years. The opinion of the Panel
highlights the extremely poor conditions of the camps, as its inhabitants often lacked running water, electricity, heating,
adequate healthcare or access to food.
I have been following this case since the beginning, said the UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Rita IzskNdiaye. It is disheartening that in the meantime lives, had been lost and many had suffered serious health consequences.
OHCHR noted that this case was brought up in 2008 by a group of 138 members of the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian
communities in Kosovo who were initially placed in three IDP camps itkovac, esmin Lug and Kablare after the Roma
Mahala (neighbourhood) had been destroyed in South Mitrovica in 1999.
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I am glad that justice is being now delivered to one of the most deprived communities who had to suffer conflict,
displacement and negligence, the human rights expert added. The opinion of the UN Panel expresses a breach of
international obligations by the UNMIK and I hope that the UN will see it as an important opportunity to hold itself
accountable.
The Panel recommends UNMIK to publicly acknowledge, including through the media, its failure to comply with applicable
human rights standards in response to the adverse health condition caused by lead contamination in the IDP camps, and to
compensate victims for both material and moral damage.
The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Chaloka Beyani, who visited the affected
families in North Mitrovica in October 2013, stated: I hope that a public apology will be made to the complainants and
their families and that swift action will be taken to provide redress to victims, to demonstrate that the UN does fully promote
and ensure respect for human rights of all, particularly those of internally displaced persons involved.
He also welcomed the Panel advice that its findings and recommendations on this case be shared with UN bodies working
with refugees and IDPs as a guarantee of non-repetition.
The Panels opinion recognizes that despite the fact that UNMIK had commissioned a report in 2000 which found extremely
elevated blood lead levels of the affected community members living in the IDP camps, UNMIK did not make the report
public and failed to take sufficient action to address the risks of lead exposure in the camps.
According to the Panel, the World Health Organization (WHO) had warned in 2004 about the chronic irreversible effects of
lead on the human body, urging UNMIK to immediately evacuate children and pregnant women from the camps, but no
submission or documentation was provided by UNMIK indicating what specific actions were taken in response to WHOs
findings and recommendations.
The experts appeal has also been endorsed by the UN Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the
environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes, Baskut Tuncak, and the UN Special
Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,
Dainius Pras.
Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine and report
back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff,
nor are they paid for their work.
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The initial focus of the collaboration is in the forestry sector, where FAO said that national experts can, after a short training,
use its software and Googles accessible geospatial data archives to conduct in a few hours mapping and classification
exercises that used to take weeks or months.
For example, easily accessible and rapidly updated remote sensing data enable a shift in forest management from inventory
reports to taking the almost real-time pulse of forests, thus opening a host of new policy prospects and further opening the
doors of scientific perception, the agency said.
FAO stressed that opportunities for future collaboration are vast, and may lead to innovation in a range of issues from
dietary nutrition and pest control to water management and climate change.
The more people involved, the better it works, said Mr. Graziano da Silva. Understanding the effects of climate change,
planning the improvements in the efficiency of production and distribution of food, and monitoring progress towards the
Sustainable Development Goals require more frequent and precise data on the environment and its changes, he added.
Using technology to change future generations
FAO said that the combination in which Google makes data and processing power easily accessible while FAO devises
ways to extract useful information has already moved into innovative territory, notably with a Global Dryland Assessment,
in which national experts, university researchers, partner institutions and FAO combined forces in an open-sourced exercise.
Results will be published later this year.
Partnerships like this bring our products into actual use, said Rebecca Moore, Director of Google Earth, Earth Engine and
Earth Outreach.
The partnership with FAO is a way we can each bring our unique strengths to make a change for future generations, she
said.
FAOs Locust Control Unit has used Earth Engine to improve forecasts and control of desert locust outbreaks. Satellites
cannot detect the dreaded insects themselves, but can accelerate identification of potential breeding areas and make ground
interventions more effective.
Other prospective applications for the technology may reduce crop losses yields and enhance plant health. Forest cover
monitoring has proven useful in Costa Rica, as trees provide habitat for birds that predate on the coffee berry borer beetle,
which can ravage up to 75 per cent of a coffee farmers crop.
Further innovative uses will emerge as more people learn how to use FAOs Open Foris and CollectEarth tools. In late May,
a team from NASA, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration, will be visiting Rome to study how
to use these tools, FAO said.
Seeing both the forest and the trees
Satellite imagery cannot replace the local knowledge and expertise often dubbed ground truth but it can boost the
efficiency, quality, transparency, credibility and, above all, the timeliness and efficacy of data collection and the validation
of existing global mapping products.
For example, by zooming in to highly granular local plots, researchers and officials may distinguish between temporary loss
of tree cover due to harvesting and deforestation driven by land use change, an important technical difference in terms of
carbon sequestration. By the same token, citizens may be able to make more efficient use of their natural resources and even
police their misuse.
We will be able to provide, every 10 days, forest assessments and in the near future food crop cover assessments, which are
especially important in times of climate change, said Ren Castro, FAOs Assistant Director General for Forestry.
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This past December, FAO and Google Maps agreed to work together, under a three-year partnership, to make geospatial
tracking and mapping products more accessible, providing a high-technology assist to countries tackling climate change and
much greater capacity to experts developing forest and land-use policies.
Above all, this is not just a crisis of numbers it is also a crisis of solidarity, Mr. Ban said.
The Secretary-General also underscored that todays internal displacement and refugee crises are signs of deeper challenges
that must be resolved from Syria to Afghanistan to South Sudan.
To that end, he will be convening the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul next month to provide a
platform to put a focus on root causes and prevention, to bridge the gap between humanitarian and development assistance,
and to improve our global response to forced displacement.
The World Humanitarian Summit will fuel much-needed momentum for the Summit on Addressing Large Movements of
Refugees and Migrants, which is scheduled in the UN General Assembly for 19 September.
Mr. Ban also stressed that world leaders must recognize that todays internal displacement and refugee crises are signs of
deeper challenges, and show greater solidarity not just through relief, but through resettlement and other legal pathways.
Refugees have a right to asylum not bias and barbed wire, he said.
Noting that he, too, was once a displaced person, Mr. Ban also emphasized that refugees bring new skills and dynamism into
aging workforces, and are famously devoted to education and self-reliance.
When managed properly, accepting refugees is a win for everyone, he said. Demonizing them is not only morally wrong,
it is factually wrong, he added.
The Secretary-General also spoke at the Inaugural Assembly Meeting of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, which
brings together multilateral organizations, governments and the private sector.
He emphasized that it is essential for multilateral financial institutions and the private sector to provide the policy
instruments and resources needed to support the transformation to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy.
UN News Centre www.un.org/news
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Markets must play a central role in managing climate risks, the UN chief said. We must put a price on pollution, and
provide incentives to accelerate a low carbon pathway.
Market prices, market indices and investment portfolios can no longer continue to ignore the growing cost of unsustainable
production and consumption behaviours on the health of our planet, he said.
Hailing the Inaugural Assembly as an important step in consolidating the gains made in the Paris Agreement, the
Secretary-General said he was very encouraged to see that businesses view carbon pricing as an efficient, cost-effective
means of reducing emissions.
Momentum is building. However, we must ensure the provision of timely and meaningful assistance to developing and
vulnerable countries for their mitigation efforts. Promises made must be kept, Mr. Ban said.
Greater international cooperation is vital for building a low-carbon, climate resilient world, he added.
The UN Daily News is prepared at UN Headquarters in New York by the News Services Section
of the News and Media Division, Department of Public Information (DPI)